Hmmm. Why not
person(given = "@github_user_id", role = "ctb") ?
At least at a quick skim, I don't see anything in either _Writing R
Extensions_ or the CRAN repository policies that gives detailed
specifications about what's required/recommended in the 'person' field ...
The closest I can get is ?person, which says
> For persons which are not natural persons (e.g., institutions,
companies, etc.) it is appropriate to use ‘given’ (but not ‘family’) for
the name, e.g., ‘person("R Core Team", role = "aut")’.
A github user presumably *usually* corresponds to a 'natural person'
(but how would we know?), but it seems as though person() wants "given"
only to be specified for mononyms <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononym>
I guess someone could dig through DESCRIPTION files on CRAN to see
how many mononymous people are already listed as contributing to R packages?
On 5/28/25 04:24, Martin Maechler wrote:
Michael Chirico
on Tue, 27 May 2025 10:38:59 -0700 writes:
> Hello,
> We recently started receiving contributions from a user who prefers to
> only use their GitHub ID.
> I tried this entry in DESCRIPTION (with their actual ID):
> person(comment=c(github="@github_user_id"), role="ctb")
> But R CMD check complains:
> * checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... NOTE
> Authors@R field gives persons with no name:
> [ctb] (github: @github_user_id)
> Is this actually disallowed for the 'ctb' role, which does not appear
> in the package citation? I can see the need for more transparency
> around the 'cre', 'aut', and especially 'cph' roles.
> What is the best practice in this case? Should I just write fake
> names, or do we require the user to divulge a real name? I don't see
> this discussed in WRE or ?person.
> Michael Chirico
I think this is a very valid question,
and hopefully one we can resolve positively (unfortunately,
I'm not sure this will happen .. given past experiences and
world politic etc ..).
If there's nothing better, using
"Anonymous", "Contributor", (before the `comment=<....>` part)
would work I think
and also not be misleading IMO.
Martin
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